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Clifford G. Shull - Banquet Speech

Clifford G. Shull's speech at the Nobel
Banquet, December 10, 1994

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I need not say that Bertram Brockhouse and I are immensely
grateful to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for affording
us the great honor of being named Laureates today. Being selected
as such is a dream for any scientist who hopes that his work will
prove useful to others.

If one looks back through the history of
advances in physics, you find many examples of notable findings
from scattering experiments. In this, you introduce some entity
to a target assembly and upon studying its interaction with the
target you learn much about the latter. Over the last century,
physicists have used light quanta electrons, alpha particles,
X-rays, gamma-rays, protons, neutrons and exotic sub-nuclear
particles for this purpose. Much important information about the
target atoms or nuclei or their assemblage has been obtained in
this way. In witness of this importance one can point to the
unusual concentration of scattering enthusiasts among earlier
Nobel Laureate physicists. One could say that physicists just
love to perform or interpret scattering experiments.

And that is where Bert Brockhouse and I
came into the picture. We were separately introduced to intense
beams of low energy neutrons, recently available from World
War-period devices, called nuclear reactors, in the years
following the war at places separated by a thousand miles in
separate research surroundings. Our challenge then was to see
what neutrons could be used for, considering their unique
characteristics.

The wonderful reward we have received today
seems to indicate that some of nature's secrets are indeed
vulnerable to this tool of the physicist. We are indeed
appreciative of the honor. Thank you very much.